The connector on the side might not be a problem. The Razr has the connection on the side as well. The center portion of the cradle pivots up at an angle to let you slide the phone in sideways.

I agree, this whole system of having to buy their adapters for phones that aren't current is lame.

They could make a universal cradle that has wire pigtails coming off for you to connect your own stuff to. :impatient

The Razr cradle I got from my Mini dealer was packaged in BMW packaging with nothing but BMW part numbers and logos on it. The instructions (which are only in German) did have Mini info in it though.

Switching phones
 

My MCS has paired with three different phones . So far looks there is no problem whatsoever. (each phone has cca 100 contacts ) .
I think MINI can pair with max five phones !

Makes sense. Thanks for the info.

I was thinking about ordering one for my wife's phone (a Sony Ericsson K750i), but she says that she doesn't like the fact of having to plug her phone into the cradle. She likes to keep it in her purse. However, she often has reception problems (most likely because the phone doesn't have a 850 MHz band) and so I'm wondering if she'd get better reception using the cradle.

OK. That puts my mind at ease! thanks

Cool, thanks for finding that! Looks like BMW added a BB Pearl adapter sleeve in October. It's even in the Youtube video. My question is: they list $75 as the price, then when I select the Pearl ($45) they add that to the $75, total price $120. Does that just mean they charge 45 extra for the Pearl sleeve, or am I buying something else too? The armrest has a little tray in the bottom that slide a little, and a button in the front but no electrical contacts anywhere. The only connection to the Pearl are the charging contacts on the back (I can see those in the sleeve on the video). How do you think the sleeve makes a connection in the armrest? And would connecting to just the charging points make the phone connect to the car's antenna (there's no external antenna port on the phone)?
Birdman: does the Blackjack have similar charging contacts on the back too (used for cradles bought separately)?

Snap-in BB
 

If you have Bluetooth USB audio option you should have received also OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS for MOBILE PHONE PROVISION . On Page 20 there are some illustrations showing how to install snap-in adapters. From this you can see that the little tray you mention is actually a blind cover which has to be removed before installing the snap-in-adapter. You pull the amrest cover back (you can actually remove it - but you do not need to just push it back as far as it goes ). When you remove the small tray you will see the connectors with the antena conector in the midle of them - this is located far back. This seems to be a conector to which all snap in adapters connect.

As regards the antena > for example with Nokia 6310 there is an antena connector in the snap-in-adapter visible from top at the same location as on the phone backside where the external antena connector is.
Looks like the BB snap-in-ad. will provide only charging ?? Best you check this with the vendor ...

RAMSES: Thanks, you've been very helpful. The Mini spiel says it'll connect to the antenna (and many posters here want it to), but I get only some phones can use this feature, making my $120 investment no more than a charger that I can buy for $8 in ebay. I cannot see how merely connecting with the charging contacts on the back of the pearl could do anything but charge it.

Yes - I agree with you. It gets even worse. Here in Europe you get also voice command with the Bluetooth USB Audio. When asked they tell you will be able to voice command the phone, NAV (if you orderd this) and the Audio .
You find out phone voice command works but the Audio NOT ! (I did not ordered the NAV because it is crap).
I do not know how is MINI-USA but here the dealers have no idea what they are selling. (I know somebody who ordered Btooth USB Audio and the dedicated IPOD interface(here cca 500 Euro) throwing away 450 Euros for this interface (the Y cable costs cca 50 Euros) because being misled by an ignorant MINI dealer !)

Looks like MINI wants as to buy some outdated phones as well :

A RETRO PHONE IN A RETRO CAR !

No, you don't get anything else. It's simply $45 more for that particular cradle. Their web site is setup very weird as they do that all over the place. I guess they want to lead you in with the low price (only to find that what you want is always the item with the extra charge tacked on).

I'm going to start another thread about this and the antenna connection confusion thanks to RAMSES II.

The Blackjack has only one port on it, on the side of the phone just under the volume control. That port has power connection for charging, data sync connection for syncing directly to a PC, headset connection for plugging in a stereo headset(or external speaker...), and a external antenna connection for connection to an external antenna. There are something like 10 or 15 tiny pins in there.

So no, there is no contacts on the back for a "cradle". There are no desktop cradles for a blackjack.


And Yes, they really need to, and would save themselves a HUGE headache, make a generick snap in adapter that has a pigtail coming out of it, with the wires labeled: +12v, -12V, +antenna, -antenna, .... so simple, and make so many people happy!

FYI: The Blackjack 2, now out, pairs and sincs fine with the MINI.

Motorola RIZR Z3.

Like Butta Baby.

I've paired this combo and it is working great. However, I noticed today that my entire phonebook didn't sync. ONly the first 4 entries from each letter group. If I make the call directly from the phone, then the number will be added to the car's phonebook. Anybody else seen this?

I got my Verizion LG8300 paired. And got the false plastic piece out of the arm rest but have no clue how to check to see if I can even get the snap in piece that will charge my phone. I went to Bimmer Nav but it does not list my phone and niether does the list Ramses posted.

Has anyone had any luck contacting your MA for info? I am going to e-mail him to see.

Thanks for any info anyone can provide.

I think the list RAMSES II provided is about it. For instance it now lists my BB 8100 pearl as of October, the phone is about a year old. Your MA probably won't know much unless he has your phone himself. Check the Phone Sleeve thread for more info on what this piece can do for you. In my case it's no more than a $120 charger.

Ramses II, hoping you see this post/question. I have that phone too, and am using it in a cradle in my Jeep w/Alpine radio, and MB using COMAND, and am hoping to use it in a cradle in my MINI too. I see in a post above you wrote " Here in Europe ". I understand the US to have a different center armrest from Europe. So I'm further wondering if that part number is appropriate for use in US center armrests and will 'snap in'?
Thanx very much,
-steve

My Cingular 3125 (smart flip phone) and my husband's Motorola Q both synced fully and easily with my '08 MCS, along with both of our address books.:thumbsup:

Thanks Peaches611! Any idea if voice dialing works for either of them?

CRADLE Nokia 6310
 

Hi

According to BMW (local dealer) there is only one cradle i.e. for EU and US . So it should be working fine. You might go for "money back" in case it won't
work (this is what I did) for what ever reason - my MCS was bought in November 2007 in EU . As you can see I am using it for quite some time and it works fine. (the phone is always charged and the signal is much stronger - since the car antenna is being used).


If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.
- Mario Andretti

RAMSES II, thanx very very much for the confirmation. I'll definitely be picking the cradle up then; probably before the car's done and delivered so I can have it with me when I go to the dealership to pick the car up... :wink:

HTC Touch Cruise

HTC Touch Diamond

Thanks orangecrush- do these phones sync the address book too? Any chance you've tried voice dialing with them?

Yes, it pulls all my contacts (except my best friend... he never shows up...wierd)

I've tried voice dialing but simply cannot do it. It's finicky, hard and impossible.

I was talking to my friend about it and he said that his MA told him not to even waste his time, the voice dialing sucks.

Do ya'll use voice dialing? If so, how does it work?

Thanks,

Mark

Yeah- I use it without any serious problems. Every now and again it thinks that I want the Main Menu instead of dialing a name, or I get a work number instead of a home number, but it's easy to just press an arrow on the steering wheel to bump it up or down to the correct number before it dials. I've got a voice that never seems to work with the interactive voice response systems at Verizon or wherever, so my results with the MINIs system are top-notch comparably.

There's a couple different ways to use it, depending on how well the phone compatibility works. If the phone is completely compatible, you can press the voice command button and say "Dial name-of-address-book-entry".

The MINI goes through your phone's address book, and looks for the closest match to name-of-address-book-entry. It decides which one is the best match, and reads it back (with the name it reads back sounding rather speak-and-spell-ish: "Do you want to dial: blah-blah-blah-blah?"

If you say "Yes", it dials, saying "No" or pressing steering wheel buttons cancels the request.

I've got my address book in a LastName, FirstName, Middle Initial format, and the phone adds work, home, mobile, afterward. Our RAZR never added the number type afterward, so it made it a bit more awkward to use.

I've found that it tends to group multiple entries of the same letter together (eg: with "LastName, Rebecca, A. - Work", it completely skips the middle initial "A")